Tag Archives: US-Cuba Relations

Richard Feinberg via Brookings Institution: “Reaching Out: Cuba’s New Economy and the International Response”

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Arch Ritter

FOREIGN POLICY at BROOKINGS

The full document can be found here:Richard E. Feinberg, Cuba’s New Economy and the International Response, Brookings, November 2011

“Reaching Out: Cuba’s New Economy and the International Response,” a new report by Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Richard Feinberg, urges the international development community to reach out to Cuba to promote its economic renewal. The report offers a detailed pathway for a gradual, systematic rapprochement between Cuba and the international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank,
and Inter-American Development Bank). In the first such survey, it also provides an overview of the existing foreign assistance programs sponsored by capitalist nations in Cuba.

The study further analyzes the reform process occurring in Cuba today and describes Cuba’s strategy of engaging with the dynamic emerging market economies, largely
overlooked by U.S. analysts. The report finds that since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba has reached out to Europe and Canada, and most dramatically and successfully to the emerging market economies of China, Brazil, and Venezuela. Far from isolated by U.S. sanctions, the Cuban economy has become deeply integrated into global trading and investment markets.

Feinberg asserts that the international financial institutions (IFIs) house a wealth of accumulated knowledge and financial resources that fit well with the needs of a
reform-minded Cuba seeking greater economic efficiency and competitiveness. As
evident in their successful relations with Vietnam and Nicaragua, the IFIs –
having reformed their own terms of engagement – can perform effectively in
proud, strong states allergic to external interference. The study reviews the foreign assistance programs of donors such as the European Union, Spain, and Canada and concludes that development cooperation can achieve results in Cuba, improve the lives of beneficiaries, empower independent small producers, and promote decentralized decision-making to local communities.

Based on these research findings, Feinberg offers these specific policy recommendations:

· The international development community should support Cuba’s incipient economic reform process and bolster the struggling reformist factions within Cuba.

· The U.S. government should recognize that in Cuba today the opportunity is in economic reform, legitimized by the regime and openly debated by the Cuban public. Promoting economic reform is the most realistic option for advancing political pluralism in Cuba.

· The IFIs should complete their historical goal of full universality and bring Cuba in from the cold. The gradual warming of IFI-Cuba relations should begin with the provision of policy advice and technical training – prior to full membership.

· The US should not stand in the way of Cuba’s gradual re-admission to the IMF/World Bank. There is no better way to encourage progressive market-oriented reforms in Cuba.

According to Feinberg, the U.S. and international community can do more to help strengthen reform factions on the island. Feinberg concludes that inside Cuba, the forces of progressive change and the forces of bureaucratic inertia and resistance are locked in a fierce struggle. The United States should join with the international development community to bolster Cuba’s forces in favor of forward-looking economic reform.

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Oakland Ross in the Toronto Star: Adios, Fidel. Hola, Hugo. Cuba charts new course

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Arch Ritter

From the Toronto Star, November 14, 2011

The new hero of the increasingly creaky Cuban revolution is a bumptious, 57-year-old politician burdened with what may well be grave medical problems — a former army officer who doesn’t sport a beard and isn’t even Cuban.

But Hugo Chavez is the president of Venezuela, and that means oil. Unfortunately, in this case, it also means cancer. The now bald-pated Chavez insists he’s licked the disease, but his prognosis is a matter of dispute.

Upon such slender, unpredictable strands do the destinies of small, socialist, island states depend — or at least those that bob above the Straits of Florida, just 170 kilometres from Key West.

“Without the Venezuelans, we’d have nothing,” says Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a prominent Cuban economist and dissident, speaking on the phone from his cramped Havana apartment. “If we lost this, I don’t know what would happen.”

This is the massive infusion of assistance — estimated to be worth about $3.5 billion a year — that Chavez now funnels into Cuba’s struggling economy, largely for ideological reasons and mainly in the form of petroleum.

Without that largesse, the island’s wilting economy might keel over, dead.

“The support from Venezuela has been phenomenal,” says Arch Ritter, an economics professor at Carleton University and an expert on Cuba. “If anything happens to Chavez, Cuba could be in trouble again.”

Cuba already is.

Two decades have spiralled past since the Cold War’s end, when Moscow hastily abandoned its only Caribbean satellite state. During those years, the island’s industrial output has shrunk by more than half, the result of rusting Soviet-era infrastructure and poor management.

“We are importing things we can make in Cuba,” says Espinosa. “We are importing coffee. We are even importing sugar. It’s crazy.”

It would be crazier still without Venezuelan support, which meets approximately two-thirds of the island’s annual petroleum needs and is delivered in at least nominal repayment for the services of tens of thousands of Cuban doctors now deployed across Venezuela and in other left-leaning Latin American states.

“Assistance from Venezuela is now the basic element of the Cuban economy,” says Espinosa. “Venezuela has converted itself into the new Soviet Union.”

Behold Cuba, 52 years after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution: a country whose rulers are mainly geriatric, white and male, where the average salary works out to just $18 a month, where sugar production — once the backbone of the economy — now lurches along at about one-half the average international level of output per hectare, and where the economic future depends to a worrisome degree on the dubious health of a man named Hugo Chavez.

Who isn’t even Cuban.

By almost all accounts, Chavez and Fidel Castro share an intimate bond, but the elder Castro was laid low five years ago by a life-threatening gastrointestinal ailment. Now 85, he has surrendered all formal claims to power and has largely disappeared from public view.

Fidel’s successor — his slightly younger brother, Raul, now aged 80 — is trying to steer the country in a new economic direction, without actually calling it that and without diluting central political control.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s largest natural trading partner remains its bitterest political foe, an increasingly nonsensical standoff that has prevailed for more than five wearying decades and betrays little sign of changing now, especially not with a U.S. presidential election in only a year.

“I don’t know what it is about Cuba,” says Wayne Smith at the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank. “Obama has done very little. It’s very disappointing.”

Shortly after taking power, U.S. President Barack Obama removed restrictions on Cuban Americans who wish to send money to relatives on the island or visit family there.

But that was about it.

The Americans still squander millions of dollars a year on provocative but ineffectual propaganda efforts aimed at destabilizing the Castro regime.

And the infamous U.S. economic embargo remains in place, still with the professed purpose of dealing a crippling blow to the Cuban revolution, something it has never done, isn’t doing now and never will do.

The reasons the punitive barrier has not been lifted have more to do with domestic U.S. politics than events in Cuba. Now, as in decades past, neither Republicans nor Democrats in the U.S. are inclined to cosy up to anyone named Castro, not if that means alienating more than a million Cuban-American voters.

 

The already bleak outlook for rapprochement between the two sides only got bleaker last March when Cuban authorities sentenced American Alan Gross to 15 years’ imprisonment on charges of distributing illegal communications equipment to members of the island’s small Jewish community.

Smith says Gross got what he deserved. After all, he had been making repeated trips to the island, delivering what Smith calls “rather sophisticated” devices, without proper documents. The Cubans finally lost patience, he says.

“I’m only surprised they waited that long.”

Others believe the Cubans are looking for a trade.

Cue the Cuban Five, a group of men sentenced in 2001 by a Florida court to jail terms ranging from 15 years to life on charges of espionage, in what many regard as a blatant miscarriage of justice.

“The case of the Cuban Five is a blot on the honour of the U.S.,” says Smith. “The trial was totally biased.”

Last month, one of the five was released from prison after his sentence was reduced for good behaviour. That was dual citizen René Gonzalez, who will be obliged to serve out his probation in the States. The others remain behind bars.

In Cuba, where the men are celebrated as heroes, the authorities fervently want them back.

But an exchange — Gross for the Cuban Five — seems a long shot at best. Besides, the most pressing challenges for Cuba right now are economic.

Raul Castro has warned that the country’s socialist economy is perched upon a precipice and last year announced his intention to lay off 1.3 million public-sector workers.

Layoffs there have been, combined with several cautious nods to small-scale entrepreneurship. Cubans may now own beauty parlours, restaurants and the like. They may buy and sell cars and even real estate.

The pace of reform isn’t fast enough for some. But even restless dissidents such as Espinosa acknowledge that Cuba has changed.

“The government has lost the ideological battle,” he says. “The majority of Cuba’s people, including the Communist party and the government, are in favour of change. There’s no turning back.”

In the meantime, there’s Hugo Chavez — and imported sugar.

 

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Center for Democracy in the America: New Analysis of U.S. Policy towards Cuba

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Arch Ritter

A new analysis of U.S. policy towards Cuba has just been published by the  Center for Democracy in the Americas. It is another well-balanced and eloquent call for a change in the failed US approach towards Cuba, a failure that has endured for a half-century.

The Table of Contents and part of the concluding comments are presented below. The complete study can be found here: Center for Democracy in the America, CDA_Cubas_New_Resolve: Economic Reform and its Implications for U.S. Policy (Hyperlink)

Table of Contents

About this Project 1
Preface 3
Section One: Raúl Castro Addresses Cuba’s Economic Crisis 7
Section Two: How the Economy is Changing for Everyday Cubans 35
Section Three: Listening to the Cuban People . 45
Section Four: Findings and Recommendations 59
The Center for Democracy in the Americas’ Cuba Program 75
Acknowledgments . 77
Endnotes 81

What Should U.S. Policy Be?

U.S. sanctions are premised on the belief that strangling Cuba’s economy will lead the system to fail, motivating the Cuban people to rise up against their government and establish a multiparty liberal democracy. After five decades, it has failed to achieve its goal. Instead, it is inhumane and counter-productive. In addition to inflicting pain on the people we are ostensibly trying to help, the sanctions could even prompt a mass  xodus out of Cuba, putting the stability of the Caribbean at risk.

Twenty years ago, amidst the wreckage of the Special Period, U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch tightened sanctions with the hope of capitalizing on Cuba’s difficulties. American policy missed the chance to align itself with the humanitarian interests of Cubans and their leadership muddled through. As U.S. sanctions became more restrictive, we ceded the playing field to allies and competitors—Spain and Brazil, China and Venezuela—who are still in Cuba today, investing and trying to help its economy grow.

While the fate of Cuba’s economic reforms rests primarily with the government and the Cuban people, actions taken by President Obama, however limited, are now playing an important supporting role. But the

United States can do more. We have a new opportunity to be seen by Cuba’s people and its future leaders supporting their efforts to build a new economy and to help the Cuban people lead more prosperous lives. The greatest contribution our country can make now is to demonstrate we want the reforms to succeed, because we want the Cuban people to succeed. If this were a core principle of our democratic policy, a series of logical steps could then follow.

First, President Obama and other U.S. policy makers should acknowledge  that Cuba’s reforms are real; that this program opens the way to a greater role for the market, and the changes are likely to exact great hardships on the Cuban people. They should also acknowledge that the reforms represent an important beginning. Until that all happens, our ambivalence plays into the hands of hardliners in Cuba who oppose reform or rapprochement with the United States. Second, Cubans lack cash and credit to make full use of their newly granted right to form businesses. The embargo and its byzantine sanctions prevent U.S. banks and developers from financing investments in Cuba. By loosening restrictions on travel and remittances, President Obama  mobilized the financial capital and support of a good portion of the Cuban American community on behalf of Cuba’s economic revival. There are additional executive decisions the president can take to ease the flow of financing to Cuba and to spur demand for the activities the emerging private sector is performing.

For example, the president could further loosen restrictions on U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. Although repeal of the statutory bar against tourist travel to the island would require an Act of Congress, unlikely in this political climate, President Obama could use his executive authority to open and expand categories of opportunities for Americans to visit Cuba.

…..

President Obama can, for example, order general licenses provided to freelance journalists, professional researchers, athletes who want to attend international sports competitions in Cuba, persons engaged in humanitarian activities, private foundations doing research, and business-related travel for authorized activities such as telecommunications,informational materials, and some marketing. He could also broaden the licensing for advisors from firms who could assist the Cubans in safe drilling and environmental protection as Cuba explores for oil in the Gulf of Mexico (as CDA recommended in the 21st Century Report on energy).

There is a broad consensus extending from the U.S. travel industry to the international human rights community that travel to Cuba should be expanded: travel is a constitutional right of U.S. citizens and has the added virtue of providing U.S. businesses broad opportunities. For Cuba’s citizens, it provides a source of profits and jobs for small businesses.

We also encourage the Executive Branch to clarify remittance expansion rules established in January 2011. President Obama has said any American is permitted to send remittances to an unlimited number of qualified Cubans of up to $2,000 per year each, but guidelines for sending remittances to non-family members are vague and need to be better defined. The regulation has no mechanism to open the door to Americans without family ties who wish to contribute remittances to Cubans they do not know and, if they could, no means for accountability exists for U.S. citizens to see if their donations were making a difference. Neither does the rule say whether the U.S. government allows Cuban recipients to seek or aggregate remittances from U.S. citizens. And answers are also needed from the Cuban government—it could identify recipient institutions which could distribute remittances to Cubans in need. Cuba should also be removed from the U.S. State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. This designation subjects Cuba to sanctions including restrictions on U.S. foreign  assistance; controls over exports of certain dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.

Cuba’s presence on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism is both substantively wrong and harmful to the Cuban economy, because it punishes Cuba for legal trade and financial transactions and deprives its people access to modern technology. The president can remove Cuba unilaterally from the terror list. He should do so.

The International Financial Institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank), have provided useful support to countries undergoing economic transitions but are off limits to Cuba because of U.S. objections. The U.S. should allow Cuba to have access to their experts and advice.

……

Our final recommendation is to stop funding the USAID Cuba program. The U.S. government wastes millions of dollars each year to bring about the type of economic and political transition it sees fit for Cuba but the effect of the program increases suspicion and tension between the two governments. A failure of the program in 2009 resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of Alan P. Gross, a U.S. subcontractor. It is impossible, under the current circumstances, for USAID to take part in meaningful programs welcomed by the Cuban government, such as those that Brazilian and Spanish development agencies carry out. “Development assistance,” USAID’s actual mandate, should be discussed bilaterally between the two countries, leading to the establishment of programs agreed upon by both countries (as is done in the rest of the world). It will take time for trust to be restored, but it’s in the interest of both countries to start now.

In the final analysis, ending the embargo and normalizing relations with Cuba ought to be a foreign policy priority of the United States. As Steve Clemons, editor at-large of The Atlantic, noted: “Failure of the U.S. to finally snuff out the last vestiges of the Cold War in the U.S.-Cuba embargo signals impotence in American strategic vision and capability. Those who support the embargo undermine the empowerment of Cuban citizens, harming them economically and robbing them of choices that could evolve through greater engagement—exactly what we have seen in transitioning communist countries like Vietnam and China.”133

In the interim, these recommendations could make an important difference.They would put the interests of the United States into alignment with the humanitarian interests of the Cuban people, send a long overdue message of encouragement to the advocates of reform on the island, and demonstrate that our country is finally ready to move beyond Cold War policies of the past and modernize our approach toward Cuba for the 21st Century.

None of these actions would sit well with the hardest of the hardliners in the Cuban American community or their representatives in Washington. Their terms of surrender for Cuba, as Phil Peters pointed out in his Cuban

Triangle Blog, are written into the statutes of the U.S. embargo. In Congress, legislators including   Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, David Rivera and others, are trying to reverse President Obama’s travel reforms, dialing back family travel and remittances to the levels imposed by President Bush. They will certainly fight actions that loosen restrictions to help push along Cuba’s economic reforms.

Nevertheless, we believe that the political dynamic of the Cuban American community has already shifted—many have moved from supporting isolation and aggression toward the island’s government to building on family ties and helping their relatives prosper and live more autonomous lives in Cuba’s new economic environment. The potential for home ownership in Cuba, and the U.S. expansion of travel and remittances, are enabling Cuban Americans to invest in the goal  of helping Cuba succeed. But this effort should go far beyond the Cuban family. It should become the motivating force behind U.S. policy.

These changes are in the broad national interest of the United States, and it is time for our policy makers to respond affirmatively and creatively to the process of reform underway in Cuba today.

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Larry Press on “The Past, Present and Future of the Internet in Cuba”

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Arch Ritter

At the dawn of the Internet, Cuba led the Caribbean in computer networking and was well positioned to continue to lead.  But the Cuban Internet stagnated due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US embargo, and the “dictator’s dilemma” — a desire to enjoy the benefits of connectivity without its political and cultural risks.

Today, Cuban infrastructure, skills, and application sophistication are behind the rest of the Caribbean and most of the world.  The Cuban Internet is like their old cars — Cuba is stuck at Web 1.0.

What of the outlook for the future?  Here we have questions and predictions, but few certain answers.  The ALBA-1 undersea cable connecting Cuba and Venezuela has been installed and will begin service in the fall of 2011.[1][2]  The cable will dramatically increase the speed of Cuban international connectivity and decrease its cost.  It seems safe to predict that current users in areas like education, health care, government and tourism will be first to reap the benefit of ALBA-1.New domestic communication infrastructure and human resources will be needed if Cuba is to utilize the cable, but it is not clear how this investment will be financed or how much progress has been made to date.  Given the US trade embargo and Chinese involvement in the ALBA-1 cable, it is likely that the Chinese will also be involved in the upgrading of domestic infrastructure.  U. S. and Cuban leaders are also aging and will doubtless change, but it is uncertain how those changes will impact the Internet.

Larry Press produces a valuable Blog on the Internet in Cuba which is well worth examination. Its address is here: The Internet in Cuba.
Larry Press

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New Publication: The Cuban Diaspora in the 21st Century

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Arch Ritter

A new analysis of the potential role for the Cuban diaspora was made public today – October 7, 2011 – in Washington and will be presented in Miami on October 10. It was produced under the auspices of the Cuban Research Institute of Florida International University and more specifically, the Project entitled “The Cuban Diaspora and the Development of the Entrepreneurial Sector” of the Cuban Research Institute in cooperation with the Cuba Study Group.

As can be seen from the Table of Contents below, the Report, while concise, is wide ranging in scope and constructive in orientation. It may prove to be an important catalyst in generating changes in attitudes and eventually policy on both sides of the Florida Straits. At least, I hope that this is the case.

A distinguished group of scholars produced this Report, including Uva de Aragón (Florida International University), Jorge Domínguez (Harvard University), Jorge Duany (the University of Puerto Rico), and Carmelo Mesa-Lago (University of Pittsburgh).  Orlando Márquez, director of Palabra Nueva, a journal of the Havana Catholic Archdiocese, joined the committee in March. The coordinator for the project is Juan Antonio Blanco (Florida International University), who also coauthored the report.

The complete study is available here:

The Cuban Diaspora in the 21st Century, FIU, October 2011

From the Preface by Juan Antonio Blanco:

The authors have analyzed relations between several states and their diasporas and studied the problems and potentials associated with the Cuban diaspora’s potential role in Cuba’s national development. While this document does not attempt to evaluate the measures adopted by the Cuban government in August 2006, it suggests that Cuba’s so-called economic update would have a better chance of success were it accompanied by a parallel update of the island’s migratory policy.
The authors have reviewed the tensions, conflicts, and traumas in the history of Cuban state’s relationship with its diaspora, but their emphasis is always on the future. Without glossing over problems, they prefer to scan the horizon for possibilities that could bring about a genuine normalization of relations between the diaspora and its country of origin; in particular, changes in existing migratory policy to bring it in line with universally recognized standards. Their analysis also includes the obstacles posed by United States policy toward Cuba, especially for the Cuban diaspora, and the need for their removal.
The members of the committee—who volunteered their services to produce this report—have formulated a series of recommendations for respectful submission to the governments of Cuba and the United States, as well as to the Cuban diaspora and Cuban civil society.
As the authors note in the conclusion to this document, “Many of the observations, conclusions, and suggestions expressed in this report are aimed at tomorrow, with the hope that they will eventually be implemented in whole or in part. Tomorrow can begin today, however, if the actors with decision-making power in this area so choose, as Cuba so urgently needs.”

Table of Contents

Preface 5
Summary 7
Introduction 11

A Better, Shared Future 11
Points of Departure  12
Advantages of a Shared Future 13

State-Diaspora Relations 16

Haiti: A strategically selective state 18
The Dominican Republic: A Transnational Nation-State 20
Cuba: Between Disinterest and Denunciation 23
Policies for Improving State-Diaspora Relations 28
The Role of Government Institutions 33
Relations with Non-Governmental actors 34
Dual Citizenship Laws 34
External Voting 35
Investment Incentives  35
“Brain Circulation” 35
Ethnic Tourism 36
Nostalgic trade 36
Relations with Charitable and Voluntary Organizations 37

The Cuban Diaspora: Possibilities and Challenges 38

The Cuban Diaspora in the United States 38
New Policies and the Diaspora  45

The Diaspora: Resources and Possibilities 47

Economic Capital  48
Social Capita 50
Human Capital 50
Symbolic Capital 51
Possible Diaspora Support for the Non-State Sector  52
Venture Capital or Joint Investment in Small Enterprises  53
Using Symbolic and Social Capital to Attract Financial Capital  55
Access to Foreign Markets, Marketing, and Outsourcing 56
Tools, Inputs, and Technology 57
Training and Consulting 58
Obstacles and Challenges 59
Policy Framework: Updating Cuba’s Migration Laws 61
The Subjective Context  63

Conclusions and Recommendations .65

Conclusions 65
Recommendations 68
To the Government of Cuba  69
To the Government of the United States70
To the Cuban Diaspora 72
To Cuban Society. 72
Epilogue 73

 

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Crecimiento económico y sector externo en Cuba

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Arch Ritter

A descriptive analysis of Cuba’s external sector and economic growth has been published by Jorge Mario Sanchez, of the Centro de Estudios sobre la Economia Cubana. Here is the hyperlink:

Jorge Mario Sanchez, Crecimiento económico y sector externo en Cuba

Jorge Mario Sánchez

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US-Cuba policy, and the race for oil drilling

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Arch Ritter
By Sarah Stephens,Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. Jake Colvin, Vice President for Global Trade Issues at the National Foreign Trade Council – 09/29/11 03:39 PM ET
.

To protect the national interest — and for the sake of Florida’s beaches and the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem — it is time to stop sticking our heels in the sand when it comes to U.S.-Cuba policy.

Before the end of the year, a Chinese-made drilling platform known as Scarabeo 9 is expected to arrive in the Gulf.  Once it is there, Cuba and its foreign partners, including Spain’s Repsol, will begin using it to drill for oil in waters deeper than Deepwater Horizon’s infamous Macondo well.  The massive rig, manufactured to comply with U.S.-content restrictions at a cost of $750 million, will cost Repsol and other companies $407,000 per day to lease for exploration.

They are taking this financial risk because Cuba needs the oil and its partners — Spain, Norway, Russia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada, Angola, Venezuela, and possibly China — believe that drilling in waters said to contain undiscovered reserves of approximately 5 billion barrels of oil is good business.

In virtually every other country in the world, developments like these would prompt high-level discussions about how to exploit these resources safely or to anticipate a crisis were a disaster to strike. Experts who have studied the currents say a spill in Cuban waters would send 90 percent of the oil into the Keys and up the East Coast of Florida. But the embargo leaves Florida’s sensitive coastal resources defenseless.

Due to the fact that the drilling involves Cuba, American companies and workers cannot lend their expertise to what could be a risky operation.  U.S. economic sanctions prevent our private sector from helping Cuba drill safely and paralyze the U.S. government, which ought to be convening bilateral discussions on best practices and coordinating disaster response.  In fact, the U.S. has no emergency response agreement with Cuba for oil spills.  While some specific licenses have been granted to permit U.S. firms to conduct limited transactions with Cuba, current sanctions bar the United States from deploying the kind of clean-up equipment, engineers, spare parts for blow-out prevention, chemical dispersants, and rigs to drill relief wells that would be needed to address an oil crisis involving Cuba.

One welcomed development came earlier this month, when William Reilly, a former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and co-chair of the Commission that investigated the Deepwater Horizon disaster, led a group of experts to Cuba to take a look at their plans.  While the administration has done well giving permission to Mr. Reilly, as well as to other experts, to discuss the problem with Cuban counterparts, it should move more aggressively to work with the Cuban government to cooperate on plans for safe drilling and responding to a possible crisis.

Rather than moving forward, some in the U.S. Congress would make the problem worse.  Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-R), who criticized Mr. Reilly’s visit to Cuba as “giving credibility to the regime’s dangerous oil-drilling scheme,” has offered legislation to try and stop Repsol from drilling.  Rep. Vern Buchanan (FL-R) would deny Repsol the right to drill in U.S. waters if it helped Cuba drill in its waters.   Thirty-four members of both parties have written Repsol directly, threatening the company if it drills with Cuba.
Yet this tactic can’t work.  Even if they could deter Repsol from drilling – which is unlikely – they cannot stop Cuba and partners from countries like China, Russia, and Venezuela, from using the rig and searching for oil.

At some point, it is likely that drilling will begin and the United States ought to do what it can to prepare for that eventuality.  The U.S. government should facilitate access by Cuba and its drilling partners to the resources they need to drill safely.  President Obama should instruct the Treasury Department to issue a blanket general license now that would allow private industry to provide what oil expert Jorge Piñon calls ”any conceivable response” in the event of a crisis.

As we have already done with Mexico and Canada, the U.S. should join Cuba in crafting a crisis response agreement covering on-scene coordinators, a joint response team, response coordination centers, rapid notification protocols, customs and immigration procedures, and communications.  The plan should be written, signed, tested, and implemented as quickly as possible.

Earlier this year, the Deep Water Horizon Commission, which Mr. Reilly co-chaired, said in its final report “that neither BP nor the federal government was prepared to deal with a spill” of its magnitude or complexity; that industry and policy makers were lulled by a “culture of complacency” that resulted in 5 million barrels of oil being dumped into the Gulf.

Having seen this movie once before, complacency is inexcusable.  Politics should not blind Washington to the reality of the situation unfolding off of our shores.

Sarah Stephens is Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas.  Jake Colvin is Vice President for Global Trade Issues at the National Foreign Trade Council.

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Cuba’s Offshore Petroelum Exploration and U.S. Policy

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Arch Ritter
POLITICO: Cuba drilling next hurdle for U.S.
By: Darren Goode (Courtesy of Jorge R. Piñón)
September 27, 2011 10:38 PM EDT
The White House must crisscross complex political and policy waters as it faces the impending reality of oil drilling off Cuba a mere 60 miles from the Florida Keys.

“It’s just like firing a shotgun in a crystal store,” said Jorge Piñón, a visiting fellow with the Florida International University Latin American and Caribbean Center’s Cuban Research Institute. “You’re going to break something eventually.”

That presents multiple challenges for the Obama administration, which is tasked with protecting the U.S. coastline and waters if a catastrophe begins off Cuba.

“I think there is a lot of a tendency to hold the breath and hope it doesn’t happen,” said Lee Hunt, president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors. “I can assure you that inaction and lack of leadership against a potential disaster would be this administration’s Katrina.”

Administration officials have already upgraded drilling standards for operations off the U.S. coast and have established a partnership with Mexico to set higher bilateral standards in the Gulf of Mexico since last year’s historic spill. And Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich said last week that “the issue of drilling offshore Cuba has been on our screen for many months.”

“I can say that this issue has been focused on and discussed in very high levels of the government,” Bromwich said.

The Spanish company Repsol is expected by January to begin drilling a deepwater exploratory oil well off Cuba in waters about 60 miles south of Key West and slightly deeper than BP’s doomed Macondo exploration well. Other exploratory wells from the same Chinese-built semi-submersible rig owned by the Italian company Saipem would follow in subsequent months — involving companies such as Russia’s Gazprom.

“Politicians don’t like to take the risk with Cuba unless they see a clear positive payback of some sort,” said Bill Reilly, a former EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush. “Now that we see the rig approaching Cuban waters, the political calculus will change.”

Reilly — who co-chaired a bipartisan commission that investigated last year’s Gulf spill — and Hunt were among a group granted permission by the administration to trek to Havana in early September to talk to senior Cuban officials in the absence of direct talks between the two governments.

“The message was drilling in deepwater is a highly challenging, risky, technologically complex job, and the lessons of Macondo show that even very experienced companies and very practiced regulators can get it wrong,” Reilly said.

Hunt, who was following up on a trip he made to Cuba last year, said the biggest difference between the two trips is the Cuban government “had taken a great deal more investigation” into safety and other protocols adopted by the U.S. and Mexico.

“In a way, I would say in 2010 they had a very solid regulatory plan. In 2011, they had a fairly sophisticated regulatory plan,” Hunt said. “I don’t have too many concerns about their ability to drill safely.”

Reilly and former Royal Dutch Shell Vice President Richard Sears, the chief technical adviser to the president’s spill commission, were in Cuba to explain the commission’s recommendations and findings.

“Turned out they knew the oil spill commission’s recommendations cold,” said Reilly, who later briefed Bromwich and White House officials about the trip. “That was kind of surprising and reassuring. They are aware they have very serious challenges, as any country that’s never done this before should have.”

But for many, the main concern is that U.S. equipment and personnel would not be ready to act quickly enough to respond to a spill.

“What’s in place from the U.S. side to respond and basically prepare for a worst case or really a spill of any kind?” asked Dan Whittle, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Cuba program, who was also on this month’s five-day trip to Havana.

Because of the decades-old U.S. embargo against Cuba, Hunt said, many resources would have to be shipped from as far away as the North Sea, the United Kingdom, North Africa or Asia.

Reilly, Hunt and Whittle are among those asking the Obama administration to grant general licenses or narrow emergency exemptions to the embargo to ensure that U.S. companies of all stripes can assist in preventing and responding to a subsea well leak.

The Commerce Department and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control have granted licenses to some U.S. companies that operate in Cuban waters, including those that could help with oil spill preparation and response. Both agencies promised to act quickly on any additional approvals that are required.

But some say granting a wider exemption is needed so that various companies — including parts manufacturers and vessel and plane operators — can respond quickly.

“It’s very complex, so the easiest way is to issue a general license and to make sure that the general license is only to be used during an emergency,” Piñón said. “There are hundreds of companies. We don’t know who is going to have that valve that is going to be needed.”

For example, well containment systems developed by the Marine Well Containment Co., a coalition of major Gulf oil producers that formed after last year’s spill, and the Helix Energy Solutions Group were instrumental in the Interior Department’s decision to start granting deepwater drilling permits again this year. Repsol has contracts with MWCC and Helix for their operations in U.S. waters, but not in Cuba.

Bromwich said he is not pressuring the Treasury to issue or not issue a general license to companies.

“It would be in the national interest to make sure that everything that can be done certainly in U.S. waters is done,” he said. “Whether it goes beyond that, I think, is among the issues that are being discussed in high levels of the government.”

Regular talks also continue with Repsol, Bromwich said.

But while Cuba appears willing to adopt offshore drilling standards modeled after those in the U.S. and Mexico, Piñón said there needs to be direct talks between the two governments.

While the embargo tightened during the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration has loosened some sanctions, including easing specific travel restrictions in January.

One challenge will be the politics in Florida, which will again be a swing state in the 2012 election. The state includes critics of any oil or gas drilling near the state’s coastline, along with hard-line Cuban refugees who wince at any melting of relations with the Castro regime. Florida congressional members from both parties have offered bills punishing companies that operate in Cuba.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, and potentially on the presidential trail, could also accuse the Obama administration of focusing more on shoring up Cuba’s domestic energy production rather than at home.

But Florida political observers say any concern about fiddling with the embargo runs a distant second to the state’s economic doldrums and the devastating impact that a spill could have on the Sunshine State.

“It’s much more of an issue for the Republican candidates than it is for the administration,” said Florida Republican strategist Ana Navarro. “I frankly don’t think the administration cares about the hard-lined Cuban-American vote, and I don’t think the hard-lined Cuban-American vote cares for the administration. And I don’t think that’s changing anytime soon.”
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Oil Diplomacy to the Rescue? Cuban Drilling off Florida Keys to Begin by End of the Year

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Arch Ritter

John Daly,Oil Price; Tuesday, 27 September 20, Courtesy of Jorge R. Piñón.

[Oil Price is a well respected oil price research and analysis publication]

For 51 years the U.S. has imposed an economic embargo against Cuba, severely crippling the island’s economy for its effrontery in choosing a socialist path for development, a policy confirmed and intensified in the wake of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Now the unlikeliest of economic interests may be bringing the two countries closer together – oil.

Specifically, oil deposits in the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba.

Spain’s largest oil company, Repsol-YPF, has contracted the massive Italian-made Scarabeo 9 semi-submersible oil rig, currently en route from Singapore, to arrive in the Florida Straits by the end of the year after the end of hurricane season to begin exploring Cuba’s offshore reserves. Repsol-YPF, which drilled Cuba’s first onshore well in 2004, intends initially to drill six wells with the Scarabeo 9 rig.

Cuba, which currently produces a paltry roughly 50,000 barrels of oil per day from onshore sources, is understandably keen to begin exploiting its offshore reserves, which estimates place between 5-20 billion barrels of crude in a 43,000 square-mile drilling area containing 59 maritime fields it has designated off its northern coast. While Fidel Castro’s close ally, Venezuelan Hugo Chávez currently dispatches 120,000 bpd to Cuba on very favorable financing terms, the arrangement is heavily dependent on the friendship between octogenarian Castro and cancer-stricken Chávez, hardly a recipe for permanency.

While Repsol-YPF is the first out of the gate, other concessionaires include Norway’s Statoil ASA, India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) and Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras.

Note the total absence of U.S. oil companies – that’ll punish those pesky Commies!

While the 1982 United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) maritime treaty provides littoral nations with a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending 200 miles offshore for exploiting maritime reserves, in 1977 U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Cuba that essentially split interstate waters and created for Cuba an “exclusive economic zone” extending from the western tip of Cuba northward to roughly 50 miles from Key West, which Havana then divided into 59 parcels for leasing.

So, what is Washington’s view of the latest developments? Depends how close you get to Florida, where politicians rely on the anti-Castro Cuban émigré vote to stay in power.

Congressional leaders like Cuban-born Republican House of Represenatives member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and U.S. Senator Florida Democrat Bill Nelson would like to see Cuba scrap its offshore drilling plans altogether, a most unlikely scenario.

A more realistic approach is embodied in last week’s visit to Cuba by International Association of Drilling Contractors chief executive Lee Hunt, who as part of a joint Environmental Defense Fund traveled to the island with William Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and co-chair of the White House task force investigating the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Royal Dutch Shell former vice president of deepwater drilling Richard Sears and Environmental Defense senior attorney Fund Dan Whittle to discuss plans to deal with possible oil spills from the Cuban projects, and whether U.S. firms might participate in cleanup activities.

The 64,000 peso question is whether Washington will allow such participation. Despite the embargo the Obama administration has said it will let U.S. companies do business with Cuba’s foreign partners in that context on a case-by-case basis. The reality of a Cuban oil spill having effects on U.S. waters has even allowed a bit of reality to intrude on Ros-Lehtinen’s policies, as she recently observed that “should a disaster occur and Florida’s waters be threatened, U.S. regulations could allow U.S. oil spill mitigation companies to engage in clean-up activities.”

Another potential factor in influencing Washington’s decisions is that Repsol-YPF may not be going it alone, either. Mexican daily La Jornada reported earlier this month that Mexican state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, more familiarly known as Pemex, is shifting from its former “Mexico first” policy and intends to begin foreign operations, including offshore drilling in Cuba. The development is hardly surprising in light of Pemex’s recent announcement that it spent $1.6 billion to raise its stake in Repsol YPF from 4.8 percent to 9.8 percent, with the idea of creating a strategic partnership. In raising its stake, Pemex said it will unite its votes on the Repsol board of directors with those of Spanish construction company Sacyr Vallehermoso, which owns 20 percent of Repsol’s shares. Pemex seems to be emulating the successful global strategy of Brazil’s Petrobras.

As Pemex, ONGC and Petrobras are all state-owned companies, while the Norwegian government owns a majority share in Statoil ASA, to interfere with these companies’ activities is to roil relations with their parent governments, and in the case of Pemex, such a stiff-necked policy could have ominous implications for U.S. energy security, as according to the U.S. Energy Administration, the United States total crude oil imports now average 9,033 thousand barrels per day (tbpd), with Mexico being the second largest source of U.S. imports, running at 1,319 tbpd.

It may be time for a rethink of U.S. policy towards Cuba. After all, Castro has outlasted the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations, so it rather seems unlikely that the embargo has produced the desired effect of removing the Cuban government.

And oil spills know no nationality.

OilWells, just off the Via Blanca, the road from Havana to Matanzas, 1999

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As Cuba plans to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. policy poses needless risks to our national interest

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Arch Ritter

The Center for Democracy in the Americas’ Cuba Program has published a thorough exploration of Cuba’s petroleum exploration plans and prospects and the implications for United Sates” policy towards Cuba generally and in the oil sector more specifically.It is the most thorough and well-balanced assessment of this issue that I have seen. (Apologies for not getting some publicity out on this work earlier.)

Here is a hyperlink to the study. The Preface and the last coupleof Concluding comments are als presented beliw.

As Cuba plans to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. policy poses needless risks to our national interest

The Center for Democracy in the Americas’ Cuba Program; February 2011

PREFACE

This year Cuba and its foreign partners will begin drilling for oil in the
Gulf of Mexico. Drilling will take place as close as 50 miles from Florida
and in sites deeper than BP’s Macondo well, where an explosion in April 2010
killed 11 workers and created the largest oil spill ever in American waters.
Undiscovered reserves of approximately 5 billion barrels of oil and 9 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath the Gulf of Mexico in land belonging
to Cuba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, although Cuba’s estimates
contain higher figures. The amount actually recoverable remains to be seen.
Finding oil in commercially viable amounts would be transformative for
Cuba. Revenues from natural resource wealth have the potential to provide
long-sought stability for Cuba’s economy and are likely to significantly alter
its relations with Venezuela and the rest of Latin America, Asia and other
leading energy producing and consuming nations. Discoveries of commercially
viable resources would also have an enormous impact upon the Gulf
environment shared by Cuba and the United States.
The U.S. embargo against Cuba, a remnant of the Cold War, is an obstacle
to realizing and protecting our interests in the region. Not only does it prohibit
U.S. firms from joining Cuba in efforts to extract its offshore resources, thus
giving the competitive advantage to other foreign firms, but it also denies
Cuba access to U.S. equipment for drilling and environmental protection—an
especially troubling outcome in the wake of the disastrous BP spill. The embargo compels Cuba’s foreign partners to go through contortions—such
as ordering a state of the art drilling rig built in China and sailing it roughly
10,000 miles to Cuban waters—to avoid violating the content limitations
imposed by U.S. law.
Most important, due to the failed policy of isolating Cuba, the United
States cannot engage in meaningful environmental cooperation with Cuba
while it develops its own energy resources. Our government cannot even
address the threat of potential spills in advance from the frequent hurricane
activity in the Gulf or from technological failures, either of which could put
precious and environmentally sensitive U.S. coastal assets—our waters, our
fisheries, our beaches—at great peril.
The risks begin the moment the first drill bit pierces the seabed, and
increase from there. Yet, our policy leaves the Obama administration with
limited options:
• It could do nothing.
• It could try to stop Cuba from developing its oil and natural gas, an alternative
most likely to fail in an energy-hungry world, or
• It could agree to dialogue and cooperation with Cuba to ensure that drilling
in the Gulf protects our mutual interests.
Since the 1990s, Cuba has demonstrated a serious commitment to protecting
the environment, building an array of environmental policies, some based
on U.S. and Spanish law. But it has no experience responding to major
marine-based spills and, like our country, Cuba has to balance economic
and environmental interests. In this contest, the environmental side will
not always prevail.
Against this backdrop, cooperation and engagement between Cuba and
the United States is the right approach, and there is already precedent for it.
During the BP crisis, the U.S. shared information with Cuba about the
spill. The administration publicly declared its willingness to provide limited
licenses for U.S. firms to respond to a catastrophe that threatened Cuba. It also
provided visas for Cuban scientists and environmental officials to attend an
important environmental conference in Florida. For its part, Cuba permitted
a vessel from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to look for damage in Cuban waters. But these modest measures, however welcome,
are not sufficient, especially in light of Cuba’s imminent plans to drill.
Under the guise of environmental protection, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
and Vern Buchanan, Members of the U.S. Congress from Florida, introduced
bills to impose sanctions on foreign oil companies and U.S. firms that help
Cuba drill for oil, and to punish those foreign firms by denying them the right
to drill in U.S. waters. This legislation would penalize U.S. firms and anger
our allies, but not stop Cuba from drilling, and will make the cooperation to
protect our mutual coastal environment more difficult should problems occur.
Energy policy and environmental protection are classic examples of
how the embargo is an abiding threat to U.S. interests. It should no longer
be acceptable to base U.S. foreign policy on the illusion that sanctions will
cause Cuba’s government to collapse, or to try to stop Cuba from developing
its oil resources. Nor should this policy or the political dynamic that sustains
it prevent the U.S. from addressing both the challenges and benefits of Cuba
finding meaningful amounts of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The path forward is clear. The Obama administration should use its
executive authority to guarantee that firms with the best equipment and
greatest expertise are licensed in advance to fight the effects of an oil spill.
The Treasury Department, which enforces Cuba sanctions, should make clear
to the private sector that efforts to protect drilling safety will not be met with
adverse regulatory actions. The U.S. government should commit to vigorous
information sharing with Cuba, and open direct negotiations with the Cuban
government for environmental agreements modeled on cooperation that
already exists with our Canadian and Mexican neighbors.
Most of all, the administration should replace a policy predicated on Cuba
failing with a diplomatic approach that recognizes Cuba’s sovereignty. Only
then will our nation be able to respond effectively to what could become a
new chapter in Cuba’s history and ours.
There is little time and much to do before the drilling begins.
Sarah Stephens; Executive Director


RECOMMENDATIONS (7 to 9)

Accept the Reality of Cuba’s Oil Program
7. The United States is served by an economically stable Cuba.
Cuba is currently undertaking significant economic reforms. It has announced
layoffs for 500,000 state workers and proposed economic reforms to enable
Cuba’s nascent private sector to absorb them. More Cubans working in the
private economy will provide more Cubans with greater personal autonomy.
If Cuba is able to develop its hydrocarbon reserves in a manner that places
the Cuban economy on a more sustainable footing, this could lessen the
possibility of another migration crisis or other forms of instability.
Cuba’s economic plans include its vision for oil. As Lisa Margonelli said at
the National Foreign Trade Council, “Cuba has an elaborate plan to be a port,
to be a source for refined products, to serve as a bonded warehouse for the
distribution of goods throughout the region. Despite being a small country,
they are thinking about energy and their economic future in a big way.”
Economies dependent on the extraction of natural resources are often
unsuccessful. Finding oil can be a double-edged sword. Cuba having foreign partners will help them guide the process of incorporating these resources
into its economy over time. Given the time required to monetize the oil,
Cuba should aim for having healthier economic and political institutions
operating before the oil money starts to flow.
8. Cuba’s potential contribution to the regional energy market could be valuable to the U.S.
Professor Soligo cites several benefits to the United States if Cuba is able to
realize the potential of its oil resources in the Gulf of Mexico. In his remarks
at the National Foreign Trade Council, Professor Soligo said, “Whoever
develops these resources it would be good for the United States.”
For example, Professor Soligo observed that Cuba has the potential to
develop an ethanol industry, and the U.S. cannot meet its ethanol targets
without imports. Policy changes would be required to allow Cuba access
to the U.S. market, and would provide substantial environment and energy
policy benefits were they to be made. While Cuba has opposed using corn
for ethanol, it has the resources to produce cellulosic material in its place.
Lisa Margonelli observes, “It is in U.S. interests to create fair price
competition for Cuban oil rather than forcing them into one-buyer fixed
price contracts with China. Securing the flow of more oil into the world
spot market has been one of the few effective American responses to OPEC’s
pricing power since 1979.”
9. U.S. policy should welcome the geo-political changes oil could
usher in.
Cuba is unlikely to disassociate itself from Venezuela or China regardless of
what the U.S. does. Still, Cuba’s post-revolutionary history is defined, in part,
by its dependence on the former Soviet Union and later on Venezuela, and
the development of its offshore resources could give the island’s economy
greater independence than it has enjoyed to date.
If Cuba were no longer dependent on Venezuela, and the U.S. engaged
in cooperative efforts on oil and the environment, we would be establishing
deeper and more positive ties with Cuba’s government and signal to its citizens
that we have a stake in their success.
as c uba p lans t o dr ill, u.s. p olicy p uts our nat ional interest at r isk
10. U.S. policy toward Cuba should no longer be predicated on Cuba failing.
For more than 50 years, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been predicated on
regime change; the Cuban government being overthrown, or being strangled
into submission by U.S. sanctions or the pressure of diplomatic isolation.
It should no longer be acceptable to base U.S. foreign policy on the illusion
that sanctions will cause Cuba’s government to collapse, or even stop
Cuba from developing its oil resources. Nor should the inertia exhibited by
this policy or the political dynamic that sustains it prevent the U.S. from
addressing both the challenges and benefits of Cuba finding meaningful
amounts of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The embargo imposes real constraints on the government’s ability to
protect our nation against the potentially grave consequences of an environmental
disaster linked to drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico by Cuba
and its foreign partners.
As one expert told us, “Cuba is a country with whom we have virtually
no diplomatic or commercial relations. If a well gets out of control, we have
no genuinely effective recourse if we’re waiting for a transition in Cuba’s
government to occur.”
If Cuba brings commercially viable amounts of oil out of the Gulf, the
embargo becomes even more irrelevant than it is today. How should the U.S.
respond, especially now that drilling in 2011 is a fait accompli and will take
place approximately 50 miles from our shores?
The U.S. should respond by changing the policy, in the ways we describe
here, so the national interest of the United States can be realized and protected.

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